My help comes from the LORD, the Maker of heaven and earth. ( Psalm 121:1)
A cartoon video skit saw a rider asking a fox about the bravest thing he ever said. After a long pause, the fox replied: “ Help. Asking for help”. He added: “ Asking for help isn’t giving up. It’s refusing to give up”.
This conversation is indeed instructive- asking for help is not a weakness but a sign of resilience not to give up, especially when we ask the right person.
For Christians who are wondering why life is so hard despite their commitment to God, there is no better person to ask for help than Jesus. He was human and therefore familiar with our suffering. He was hard-pressed but he persevered to the end and victory.
“For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are–yet he did not sin”. (Hebrews 4:15).
Many who are being pressed by numerous challenges have wondered if they can stand more pressure without giving in.
Many are in this situation longer than necessary because they have not relinquished their troubles to Jesus and asking him to help take care of their burden.
Has he not requested that all who are labored and burdened should come to him to rest?
Are you still carrying your own burden in your strength? Have you not read that “ The Lord is my helper; I will not fear…”. (Psalm 118:6).
Beloved, we must recognize that we have been called out of the world into the Kingdom of God and that this will not come without opposition from the devil. It’s never going to be a free walk in the park.
It is not in the devil’s interest to see the Kingdom of God gain many champions who will go on to deplete his dark kingdom with their testimonies of deliverance.
To this end, one special arsenal in the devil’s armory of tricks is to make our problems bigger than they actually are through negative thoughts to trigger fear and discouragement.
Once fear comes, we lose focus on the need for divine intervention and all we see is our looming problem. This is why the devil is intent on attacking our faith.
He knows the human mind so well that all he needs to do is to amplify our worries and we will immediately get discouraged and lose faith in the power of God to help us.
When the children of Israel made their way to the promise land some of them saw only their challenges; losing focus on the ability of God to help they became fearful – “There we saw certain monsters of the sons of Anak, of the giant kind: in comparison of whom, we seemed like locusts”. (Numbers 13:33).
The devil’s objective is always to deflate our faith and to make us see help in God as hopeless. The danger is that whenever we arrive at this point we would always seek help in the wrong places and further complicate our situation.
But the good news is that we are never alone, and there is always present help from God and all we need to do is ask him to help us in our moments of discouragement or fear. “ For He, Himself has said, “ I will never leave you nor forsake you”. (Hebrews 13:5).
In Psalm 34, the Psalmist says: “I sought the LORD, and he answered me; he delivered me from all my fears. Those who look to him are radiant; their faces are never covered with shame. This poor man called, and the LORD heard him; he saved him out of all his troubles”.
What an assurance of divine help!
However, in order to always stay confident in God’s help in the moments of life’s challenges we must have a relationship with Jesus at all times and not only in times of trouble. When we do this we can together with the Psalmist confess that “I have set the LORD always before me; Because He is at my right hand I shall not be moved”. (Psalm 16:8).
We must also have the mindset of a soldier, not giving up but knowing that the devil’s opposition is the training ground for Christian maturity. It develops our faith and makes our testimony effective. (2 Timothy 2:4).
For God’s help to be effective in our life, we must strip off the excesses of sin that slows us down, which hinders our access to God. The Bible admonishes us to “……throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us”. (Hebrews 21:1).
Rise up therefore from the shadows of fear and discouragement and lay hold on God for his unfailing help: “Therefore He says: “Awake, you who sleep, Arise from the dead, And Christ will give you light.” (Ephesians 5:14).
One confession is enough, and all you have to do is to boldly say this: “ The Lord is my helper; I will not fear”.
Reading
Hebrews 13: 1-7
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